Gitcoin Username: @epowell101
ETH Address: epowell101.eth
Discord Handle: epowell101#7717
Twitter: @epowell101

Statement of Intention / Your Values & Reasons for Joining

I deeply care about Gitcoin and its mission. I have a lot of experience that I use to regularly contribute to Gitcoin as a well-informed steward and instigator of the OpenData Community.

Raised by civil rights activists, I’ve always had a healthy disrespect for authority and an appreciation for the community building that change requires.

Along the way I was an early board member of the Earth Island Institute, nurturing “public goods” using the tools we had at that time. I was invited into that role thanks to my work helping to grow one of the first large dual or triple bottom line companies in San Francisco, then known as Working Assets.

Fast forward many years and I became one of the more prolific creators of open-source infrastructure projects and their sponsoring companies as a 4x founding CEO. And then, inspired in no small part by Gitcoin, I pulled the ripcord and shifted to web3 in 2021.

In the Fall of 2022 I became an active part-time contributor to Gitcoin - focusing on open data. As explained on the Gitcoin Forum here the OpenData Community can help Gitcoin achieve its essential intents by decentralizing the analysis & potentially the tools themselves necessary for public goods funding to flourish.

I am also thankful to be a public goods operator in the metagovernance DAO, Wildfire. Via this collaboration, I work with colleagues who are active in governance and governance design across the breadth of web3, from ENS to Bankless and from Optimism and Aave, DAO Haus, and elsewhere. I introduced Wildfire to our Gitcoin forums here:
https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/introducing-wildfire-scaling-governance-fire-eye-contribution/11005

I intend to be an experienced, analytical, and compassionate voice as a steward. As an example, in November of 2022 I asked the hard question in public about whether we are collectively spending too much given inherent risks and the macro environment. This Forum post became one of the most active during the period and has led to a healthy level of introspection.

Is Gitcoin over its skis? should we hold spending flat while addressing unavoidable risks? 📜 Budget Proposals

In today’s Steward’s call, I raised the question of whether Gitcoin might be “over our skis”. In this post, I’d like to explain my question and offer some evidence in support of the hypothesis that we are actually “over our skis.” Skiing? The metaphor to be over one’s skis refers to emphasizing a course of action to such an extent that it constrains freedom of maneuver - implicitly in conditions in which one might want to be able to change direction. When you lean far forward when sk…

Qualifications / skills:

• Metagovernance professional
• More than 20 years of experience as a board member, founder, and individual contributor of for-profit and non-profit organizations
• Active contributor in Forums and as a leader of OpenData Hackathon and Community